Free Tomato Seeds, YAY!

Thanks to Susy at Chiot's Run for linking the Free Tomato Seeds offer from WinterSown and enabling me to acquire more tomato seeds, and feed my addiction. They are a non-profit seed-sharing group, to whom I will be donating seed to at the end of this season. If you didn't see it at Susy's blog, here's a link to it. Basically you send an SASE and a list of 6 choices, plus 4 alternates. The varieties are listed as all OP varieties, though I saw one or two that I'm pretty sure are hybrids.
They sent my 6 tomato requests, plus most of my alternates as well as a bonus pack of Field Pumpkin seeds. Basically, it feels like my birthday.

Here's what I got:
Egg Yolk
Cherokee Purple
Heatwave
Sub-Arctic Plenty
Russian Persimmon
Marglobe
Green Pineapple
Absinthe
Stupice
Field Pumpkin

The Sub-Arctic Plenty and the Stupice are both 50-60 day varieties, and will be added to my year round tomato experiment.

I don't have a picture of my free seeds, so I will leave you with a gratuitous picture of Sparkle, my silver-laced wyandotte, as well as a reminder that I'll be teaching the "Raising Chickens in Your Backyard" class for the Phoenix Permaculture Guild at the farmer's market this weekend for any Phoenicians that might be interested.

The rest of the ax... forcefully self-sufficient

Well, today we got the news that I was afraid would be coming, my husband is officially laid off. I, being self-employed as a painter (art not houses) am also having a very slow income time because the people that usually would buy art are either broke, or hoarding all their money so they don't become broke too. So what better opportunity to put my self-sufficiency skills to work. Mind you they won't pay the hospital bill, the mortgage, our car payment etc, but they might 'pay' the food bill, the clothing bill and lower some other bills like electricity.

Of course we are both going to be looking for some paycheck work and hopefully our small savings will tide us over this rough patch. We realize that the economy sucks and we're likely going to be taking jobs our college educations will go unused at, but maybe being forced to be very productive in our gardening etc. will be rewarding enough to make up for that.

Luckily, I have all those great heirloom seeds coming in the mail. That gives me something to look forward to, and I don't feel guilty about having bought them since they'll be put to very good use. For those of you that are in the Phoenix area and don't feel like starting your own seeds indoors in January, I expect to have a few extra seedlings of interesting and productive varieties of tomato, peppers and eggplants mostly. You can contact me here and/or also I'll bring them down to the Saturday downtown farmers market at the Permaculture booth in a few weeks when it's transplant time. They will be cheap, and if you happen to represent my bank, they will be available for mortgage bartering.

I don't mean for this to be a downer post. My mom is encouraging me to view this as a great opportunity. I think opportunity would be a word more suited for an occasion where you are given 2 weeks and a hundred dollars to make a fantastic present for a friend. This is more of fear-based initiative, where the car's going to blow up so I better figure out how to utilize my gum, ball point pen and paperclip to avoid catastrophe. Although, I suppose that's a sort of opportunity too...

Hello 2009, more seeds!

My husband and I spent New Years day up in snowy Flagstaff, AZ. Living in Phoenix, snow is a very novel thing so we pulled over by the side of the highway as soon as we could, made a sled out of a stiff sunshade for the car and had a great time. It was a clear 55 degree day though my husband was wearing enough gear to get him through a Yukon winter. After sledding and snowball fights we went into town and I stumbled on a used copy of Rodale's encyclopedia of organic gardening for $8 (which I bought with store credit), I found two dimes, then we ate pizza, and bought some carmel on the way back, so it was an all around awesome day.



I am still waiting to receive my seed order from Baker Creek, It seems like it's been forever, though it's only been 4 mail days since I ordered it. I just can't wait to find out what free seed packet they send and get started planting everything. I'll be using my seedling heat mat that I got off ebay for $20 (including shipping) so I can really get an early edge on those tomatoes. All right Christmas money!

Every year gets a general heirloom seed order and a native heirloom order. When I read the rest-of-the-country catalogs where it says that a certain something produces well in the heat, I always have to stop myself from getting excited and realize that they probably mean 88 degrees, not 115+. Sometimes I try anyway. I wish they had a separate zone system for the upper limits of what solar beatdowns plants can take, the closest I get to this is my native heirloom order. We're fortunate to have a place like Native Seed Search in the state that caters to our 'specialized' climate. Nothing as exciting as white tomatoes, tigger melons and ground cherries, but I did order some nice varieties of beans, squash, okra, pollinator-attracting flowers and a few other experimental things. I would show pictures, but I think you all know what black beans look like.

I'm looking forward to 2009 on the tiny farm. We will soon have all 10 chickens laying, over 50 heirloom varieties of fruits/vegetables along with about 30 fruit and nut trees. Most everyone will be pinching pennies this year, but at least urban farming is a fun way to do it.

New Seeds are on the way!!

After crying and grumbling about my $3,000 hospital bill I realized there was only one (realistic) way of cheering myself up: the 2009 heirloom seed order. Up until now, I've preferred heirlooms but would occasionally buy an early girl tomato on a whim when walking through the garden center. I think those days are over, there are just too many benefits to growing heirloom seed. I usually order from heirloomseeds.com, but I saw that they have about a month turnaround time right now because they're so flooded with orders. That's fine for people in cooler climates, but I wanted to get my tomatoes, peppers and eggplants started indoors in mid-January, so this year I ordered from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. I spent several hours looking over my choices and here's what I finally decided on:

Ivory Egg Tomato
70-75 days. Sent to the United States by a seed saver in Sweden, this rare and attractive ivory-cream colored tomato is the shape and size of a chicken egg. The creamy flesh is both sweet and rich; great for making a lovely sauce, or in salads. Plants are very productive.

White Queen Tomato
70-75 days The favorite white variety of many tomato collectors, this heirloom is said to have been introduced in 1882 by A.W. Livingston, though many people question the exact date of introduction. 4-8 oz. fruit have one of the best flavors of all tomatoes, being fragrant, fruity and intensely sweet. It's creamy white in color and very attractive. A productive variety that has become very rare.

Bloody Butcher Tomato (My response to Early Girl... take that patented varieties!)
60 days. A small 3-4 oz ‘cluster’ tomato. Fruit are deep red in color and have a nice tomato flavor. Production is really good, but where this open-pollinated tomato really shines is its earliness. It ripens in only about 60 days, making it ripen about the same time as Early Girl, but this tomato is much tastier.

Roma Rio Grande Tomato
Vigorous plants produce many 4"-long, pear-shaped fruit with dry flesh, perfect for fresh use and sauces. Productive during hot, dry summers.

Yellow Pear Tomato
78 days. Very sweet, 1 1/2" yellow, pear-shaped fruit have a mild flavor, and are great for fresh eating or for making tomato preserves. Very productive plants are easy to grow.


Applegreen Eggplant
70 days. An early light green eggplant, good yield, very tender and delicious, smooth oval-round fruit growing on small plants. Highly recommended. Developed by the late Prof. Elwyn Meader, UNH 1964.


Casper Eggplant
75 days. Medium size, very attractive, smooth ivory-white fruit, that have a very mild mushroom-like flavor. Prolific plant. Fruit ripens early. An excellent variety for specialty growers and gardeners.

Early Purple Sprouting Broccoli
An English heirloom variety, bred for overwintering. Produces lots of purple broccoli sprouts in the spring. Grows slowly through the winter; very frost hardy. A great variety that is very hard to find in this country; delicious!

Boston Pickling Cucumber
50 days. An old heirloom dating back to 1880. Vigorous vines give large yields of smooth green fruit. It is excellent for pickles, very crisp and good quality. A very popular variety at the turn of the century.

West India Burr Gherkins
65 days. (Cucumis anguria) Not a true cucumber, but used much like it. Will not cross with C. sativus-Very beautiful long vines and hundreds of small tasty fruit. Yields better than any cucumber. These are becoming rare. They do great in hot humid [yeah, I know Phoenix is a far cry from humid, but we do have the hot! I thought this was worth a try anyway] weather. Introduced to the USA in 1793 from Jamaica, and used pickled or boiled by the Colonies in Jamaica.

Ground Cherry (Strawberry Husk Tomato)
Huge yield of tart-sweet berries. This is the common type, used by the Pilgrims; excellent for pies, jams, and preserves of all kinds, also delicious fresh. The fruit grows inside a paper like husk, (the same as Tomatillos.) Grow it the same as you would tomatoes.

Lemon Balm
Deliciously lemon-flavored; great in tea. A vigorous, hardy plant.

German Chamomile
(Matricaria recutita) Beautiful, small flowers; makes a relaxing tea with a sweet, fruity fragrance; medicinal. Attractive plants.


Tigger Melon
The most amazing melon we have grown. The fruit are vibrant yellow with brilliant fire-red, zigzag stripes, (a few fruit may be solid yellow), simply beautiful! They are also the most fragrant melons we have tried, with a rich, sweet intoxicating aroma that will fill a room. The white flesh gets sweeter in dry climates. Small in size the fruits weigh up to 1 lb. - perfect for a single serving. The vigorous plants yield heavily, even in dry conditions. This heirloom came from an Armenian market located in a mountain valley. It was the most popular melon at our Garden Show last August and makes a unique specialty market variety.

Orange Bell Pepper
Super sweet, brilliant orange fruit are blocky, and good-sized thick flesh is flavorful and among the best tasting of all peppers. Plants produce large yields of this most magnificent pepper.

Red Cheese Pepper
80 days. Candy-sweet, round, flat, 3", pimento-type peppers that have thick, red flesh, great for stuffing or fresh eating. So good, they are almost addictive. Very productive plants. Once used to color cheese.

Red Malabar Spinach
70 days. This beautiful plant is not a true spinach but a different species (basella rubra). This heat-loving Asian vine has lovely red stems and delicious, succulent leaves that are great in salads and stir-frys. A delicious green that can be grown as an annual in many areas or as a perennial in sub-tropical areas. [I've seen this at the farmer's market and have known people who grow it locally and it seems to do well here, it has a flavor that's a bit too lemony-tart for my taste, but it produces greens in the summer in Phoenix, so you take what you can get :)]

PLUS a surprise seed pack! I can't wait to see what kind they'll send me. I am so excited to get these growing!!